Founders of Twitch.tv shut down original site ahead of rumored YouTube deal.

On Tuesday, Justin.tv, the video streaming service that created the popular gaming video site Twitch, announced its closure effective immediately.

Visitors to either the main Justin.tv site or any of its subchannels are now redirected to a goodbye message announcing that "the Justin.tv website, mobile apps, and APIs are no longer in service." Following that announcement is a Q&A about the closure, and the first question—"Why?"—dances around the answer. The FAQ indirectly blames the popularity of Twitch: "Unfortunately that means we need to shut down Justin.tv."

Such an answer only fuels recent rumors and reports that have all but confirmed that YouTube will soon acquire Twitch for $2 billion. Should that happen, today's news hints at Twitch's services remaining largely unchanged, as Justin.tv users are advised to transfer their account to Twitch by September 5, 2014. (Paid Justin.tv users have already had their accounts converted to similar services on Twitch.)

As of press time, Justin.tv's main blog had not been updated to reflect this news; its last post, dated May 29, was an announcement that its live-video archives would be deleted on June 15.

Justin.tv launched in 2007 to allow users to stream their own webcam, computer, and television feeds over the Web well before YouTube allowed its own users to do so. It reached a notorious level of popularity thanks to its users streaming live sports feeds across the world, but it eventually became so overwhelmed by game-streaming users that it created a subsite in 2011, Twitch.tv, so gamers could gather in one place.